


Soldiering On and On

by jazzinjuke



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Adult Language, Death (But no major characters just side ones I created), Implied PTSD very briefly, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, but i promise the ending isn't, give the Sad Dads some closure for once pls, mentions of depression, mild violence, ok here we go, the first chapter is sad ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzinjuke/pseuds/jazzinjuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things were never done, things were never finished, not when it came to John Morrison and Gabriel Reyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soldiering On and On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for something completely different than what I usually write. I'm in a sad mood, so this is is the result :3  
>  Next chapter will be more happy, but have this in the mean time

There wasn't much to be said about John Morrison. He was tall, blond, and pretty, with a firm jaw and serious eyes, but besides that he was nothing remarkable. Just another one of the unlucky suckers that ended up in SEP. He was perfectly boring as far as Gabriel Reyes was concerned. One file labelled 'Whatever' in big blocky red letters and done.

How simple it would be, to have just been 'done'. But things were never done, things were never finished, not when it came to John Morrison and Gabriel Reyes.

* * *

 

Their own bodies became their enemy and prison in one. 

Sometimes the pain was so bad that the rest of their senses were dulled. During these times, Reyes pulled out a bottle of scorching spicy hot sauce he had snuck in and drowned his plate in it, just so he could taste something. Other times, it's the exact opposite and everything was too much.

Morrison woke up one night, able to feel every individual thread of his blanket as it rubbed uncomfortably on his naked skin, too hot, too hot, it's suffocating. He all but ran to the mess to get some water and found Reyes looking down at a plate of food, face blank and eyes empty. He and Reyes hadn't had much interaction, just enough to learn the other's name and promptly replace it with a nickname. He wasn't sure if that made them friends or not. Friends gave each other nicknames, but he didn't feel like Reyes' friend.

"They just couldn't help themselves, could they?" he asked the otherwise empty hall rhetorically, sarcasm biting in his words, "They couldn't be satisfied with taking my guts and bones and blood and twisting them in to something new, they had to take my one true joy with 'em."

He shook his head jerkily and it was only then he realized that the other man's eyes were shiny. Unusually shiny.

"This fucking _mild_ salsa is burning me. I have the taste buds of a Scandinavian. _Fuck_ ," he buried his face in his hands, "What would  _mamá_ think? Her boy, unable to handle mother fucking salsa without out crying."

John could guess that it wasn't just the spiciness that caused the tears, but he didn't say anything. Without a word, he slapped a carton of milk on the table. Reyes stared at it, digging the palm of his hand into his eyes and reaching for it before he downed it, thin streams of the milk trailing down his chin, in his short beard, down his neck.

"Drinking milk like a white boy," he gasped when he finished, shaking his head again in disgust, "Pathetic."

He finally felt Morrison's eyes on him and rose an eyebrow.

"Something you need, Indiana?" he snapped, "Quit staring, there's no show to see here."

"Trying not to move much right now," he said through tight teeth and thin lips, and cringed, hyper aware of every muscle moving in his face and throughout his entire body that was effected because of it, the vibrations of his voice through his throat, his jaw, his skull, his chest, his everything; but he figured he could show some weakness since he had seen some of Reyes'. It felt fair, "I can...feel, Everything."

The dim lights of the dark mess hall were blinding him, he closed his eyes but he could still make out shadows behind his lids, feel every twitch of his muscle, and it felt so alien, like he was in a stranger's body that he had no control of but could still feel, like he was drowning in the sweat rolling down his bare torso and parched at the same time, the injections always hit hardest a couple hours later, usually in the middle of the night and that's why everyone was always so exhausted, no sleep--

A hand, cool against his burning skin jolted him out of his thoughts.

"Don't focus on it. Eyes on me, Indiana," Reyes commanded, and his entire being singled in on the large, cold hand circling his wrist; it helped. Some.

A strangled gasp of air made it's way into his chest and it was a struggle to keep his attention only on that hand rather than the way he could feel acutely the way his lungs and ribs expanded inside him. He let out a choked laugh.

"You'd think it'd get easier."

"Such is life."

"Wow. That was deep, L.A."

"Fuck off."

_Those were the simple nights. War hadn't broken out yet, but there were whispers of rogue Omnics. It seemed so distant though, in that little mess hall and kitchen in the middle of the night, when they both couldn't sleep, tortured by the mutiny their bodies went through and found themselves there, then coming back even when their bodies got used to the torture; asking about their homes, who they had first kissed, the meaning of life. "Fuck if I know," Morrison said, "Fuck if anyone knows." Reyes agreed and they became something of friends, tucked into that little kitchen away from the world._

* * *

"Fuck man, that is so fake. Why do these things even bother with plot anyway?"

"I don't think they were being paid for their acting skills, Quincy."

"Obviously they were," Elko said, "That was some good acting, but I know a faked orgasm when I see one. Pretty convincing though, don't you think? Takes some decent actors to pull that off."

It had been a sort of ritual for a few members of the SEP. Every couple of weeks they would get together and blow off some steam when the program got too heavy. A few weeks in, Garcia had pulled him aside and proudly showed him a vintage DVD player and a couple of pornographic vids he had brought along, managing by some miracle to sneak them under the radar. Now a group of them would huddle up in someone's bunks every so often and wind down by watching the people on screen get down and dirty for some good old fashioned fucking. It had been a little awkward when Elko had showed up unexpected one time, but she had just rolled her eyes, kicked aside Quincy to make room for herself, and proceeded to watch with rapt attention the two women with painfully long-looking fingernails make out and feel each other up.

Sometimes it led to other things, a spontaneous hand job or blowie, but for the most part, they sat around and poked fun at all the terrible acting or unrealistic moaning.

"Man, if only I could get to anal that quickly," Garcia sighed whimsically as they watched, "Prep always takes way too goddamn long. Wish I could dive right in like that."

"That woman probably had a plug up her ass for two days and then prepped herself for at least an hour before they shot this ," Elko shrugged nonchalantly, "You don't just 'dive right in' when it comes to anal."

The boys all gave her an odd look. She shrugged again.

"My sister owns a sex toy shop. She knows about this kind of shit. Says something about your family when the child who sells vibrators and is close friends with porn stars is the normal one."

The woman on screen started to give head to a second man and Nguyen let out a groan.

"Shit, could you imagine Morrison going down on you like that?"

Some hoots and cat whistles echoed around the small room as Quincy and Reyes smacked his shoulder and elbowed his side playfully.

"You think about farmboy like that often?" Garcia wiggled his eyebrows when the other flushed.

"You telling me you don't?" he retorted, cheeks slightly darker than usual, "You look me straight in the eye and tell me you'd never fuck the ever-loving shit out of that pretty mouth of his."

Garcia looked thoughtful for a moment.

"I bet his hair would be soft. Perfect for yanking on while he sucks you off," he said, "Huh, if I didn't think about it before, I sure as hell am now. Thanks, Nguyen."

"Yeah?" Reyes grinned, "You want those big blues looking up at you when your balls deep in that mouth?"

"Ugh, stop you two, or I really might have to go rub one out," moaned Quincy, hand casually on his crotch.

"If Morrison weren't so pretty, I'd shame the lot of you to hell and back for getting hot over a white boy," snickered Reyes.

"Come on, Reyes," Elko nudged him with a light smile, "Even I would put a dildo up that county boy's ass, you can't blame us."

He shot her an amused look while Quincy and Nguyen smothered moans at the mental image she had given them.

"I thought you were gay."

"I am. Doesn't mean I can't appreciate a finely toned butt like that," she smirked; there was a pause before she gained a thoughtful look herself, "You know, I bet you anything that boy is a virgin."

A silence fell like thunder over those in the room, save for the escalating moaning on the screen. Quincy jumped up with a muttered curse and slammed into the small toilet attached to the room.

"Thanks a lot, Elko!" he yelled through the door.

She laughed as Garcia whistled lowly.

"Virgin huh? I could definitely see it. Shit, I might have to use the restroom after Quincy's done in there."

Reyes laughed at them all.

_He later found out that no, Jack Morrison was not a virgin and he could do **things** with his mouth that should have been illegal with what they did to him. And maybe it was a bit of a disappointment when he didn't get a blush from him when they first did something as they were slowly dying from the inside out from all the injections and tests, that he wasn't Jack's first, but he was a grown-ass man and damn did Morrison's experience make him good, so he got over it. And maybe he remembered when he had laughed at his friends for fantasizing about the man, but he was too far gone by then to care about his own words._

* * *

"I dunno why this is shocking."

"Are you kidding me?" Quincy asked him.

There were ten of them, strapped into the transport headed directly to DC. The Omnics had attacked other countries first (where the most Omniums were: mostly the 'second world' nations like China where it had been cheaper and therefore more profitable to manufacture the robots) but when they hit the US, they cut right to the chase: Washington DC and many other major cities on the east and west coasts. They had been deployed in groups to cities around the country and theirs was headed for the capital. It's what they had been training for and now it was happening and everyone was on edge.

"No. I don't know why everyone's acting like this is a surprise."

"Morrison, are you seriously pulling this right now? This isn't something to take lightly."

"I'm not," he said, "I'm not joking. I dunno what people thought was going to happen. Those Bastion units were clearly made to kill. And now people're  _surprised_ they're killing."

"They're surprised because they're not answering our orders, they're answering other _machines_ orders, you insensitive dumbass," Bradley said incredulously; Morrison shrugged.

"They were made with the intent to kill people. Well, they're fulfilling that purpose."

They were silent as the transport rumbled along, bumpy and fast.

"Save the 'I told you so' speech for the government," Garcia spat, "If there is one by the time we get there."

"He's got a point," Elko said, "Humanity has probably screwed the pooch for real this time."

"Doesn't matter now. We have a problem to deal with, so we deal with it and don't spend time bickering over how it came about," growled Reyes, and they all shut up.

_Many years later, when Jack was surrounded by burning rubble and ruin, when he could hardly see and was barely alive, he thought bitterly to himself, 'I dunno why this is shocking'. As he dragged himself away from the destruction after failing to desperately find his best friend he thought, 'But it is. And it's my fault.' "Dumbass," Bradley's voice came back to him from nearly three decades ago. "Screwed the pooch this time," Elko said. "I fucking hate you, Jack," Reyes said._

* * *

 

"Do you guys know which Omnics were the first to start rebelling? Like, for real rebelling, like killing people."

"Why do I care?" Elko asked Hall as they set up for the night in a clearing in a diseased-looking forest. They had been resorting to guerrilla-like warfare for the past few years, led by Reyes. Of the original fifty super soldiers that had entered the war, twenty five remained. Even numbers, nice and neat, divided perfectly in half, an easy multiple of five, a nice shiny quarter with a dead man's face and patriotic ' _Liberty: In God We Trust'_ stamped into it.

"It's history, man. Know thy enemy and that shit."

"Hall, shut up," Bradley said.

"Do you know?" Heart asked, genuinely curious, and the rest of the group groaned collectively, knowing what was coming. Hall always made up such bullshit. Had a real flair for stories, none of them to be believed.

"Yeah, man. It's not common knowledge, but I know," he paused dramatically for the build up, even though they were all doing their best to ignore him, "It was sex robots that made the first kills."

They all burst out in angry yelling at him. Someone threw a boot at his head.

"Dude, shut the _fuck_ up," Nguyen instantly groaned.  
"You must've reached so far up your ass for this one," chuckled Garcia.  
"There's no way those are even real," Kawamoto said flatly.

"You don't know that," Hall said evenly, "I'm telling you, guys, humans have been fascinated by robo-fucking pretty much since their inception. Of course there's sex-Omnics. Anyway, questions about their existence aside--which is stupid, because they're totally a thing--" "You are so full of shit," someone crowed. "--Shut your mouth, they're real--Dude, I'm telling you, it was the first Omnic killings. This guy in Las Vegas visited a club, right? Well, this one specialized with Omnics. He went into a backroom with one, and they were doing stuff as people who enter these establishments are want to do, and suddenly the eyes of this Omnic he's got his dick in go red, and next thing he knows, his willy is nothing but a bleeding stump with the balls dangling below."

"There is no way this is real," Kawamoto said again, face buried in her hands in exasperation.

"It is!" he insisted, "Anyway, there's more. So, he's like freaking the fuck out, 'cause his dick is gone, and he gets a hold of a bottle of champagne that was in the room and smashes it into the robot--causes it to short-circuit or some shit--and runs, man, fucking runs to the nearest hospital. Shows up, crotch a bloody mess and dickless, and when the police go to investigate, they find out that a lotta other patrons that night weren't as lucky to reach champagne bottles like poor Richard 'Dick' McNoDick was. First mass Omnic killings, man, they were by the hands of sex robots."

"God, will you shut up now?" Bradley asked.

"I coulda gone my entire life without hearing this. Fuck you," said Quincy.

"There's a lesson in all this you know," he carried on sagely.

"Yeah? That humans are such depraved dicks that we incurred the wrath of tin cans?" Elko rolled her eyes.

"No, it's that you don't fuck robots. Duh," Hall said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Hall, shut the fuck up," Reyes said.

At that was that.

_Later on in the war, when Hall was long gone and they were listening to one of Wilhelm's tall tales, many of which were also not to be believed, or at least not to the hyperbole they were told in, Jack or Gabe might laugh and say "Good one, Hall." They would both pause and then one of them would grab the other's shoulder silently. It would be a quiet rest of the day whenever those slips happened. And then they would drink some coffee and get over it._

* * *

 

There were ten. And then there were two.

Elko was gone ( _Bastion unit)_ , so was Garcia ( _and his head, too, ripped off by a Caretaker unit),_ as was Nguyen ( _didn't get out of the Omnium in time for the explosion),_ Bradley ( _who had turned back for Nguyen, dumb bastard),_ Kawamoto ( _s_ _he had launched herself on top of a grenade to shield Heart),_ Heart ( _taken out by the same fucking grenade Kawamoto had sacrificed herself for; "There's something poetic there," Hall said, "I'unno what, but it's poetic." "Shut the fuck up, Hall," said Morrison.),_ and Hall ( _who stepped on a mine not minutes later, looked him and Morrison dead in the eye as they ran ahead before they realized he hadn't followed, smiled unhappily with wide eyes and said, "Poetic, I tell ya," before he lifted his foot)_. Quincy was gone, too, although not to the war they were fighting. He was gone by a war against his own body. The serum or whatever, it had happened to a few of them earlier in the program, their body rejecting it, but they had showed signs early on and been pulled immediately. It wasn't supposed to happen this late, they thought they were safe from the side effects at that point. He started breaking down in front of them, drowning inside himself as they marched on and one night it was clear he wouldn't be going further. Reyes can distinctly remember them laying shoulder to shoulder in the dark, away from the others.

"Man, I just...I just keep getting fucked," he said, tired; he had been in serious pain the past few weeks. Dying from the inside out was never pleasant, "One thing after another my whole life, y'feel?"

"Yeah."

"Well, it was a good war," he went on, shifting his weight and Reyes helped him lay back, "Think I'll fuck off now though. You give 'em hell, Reyes."

And he had closed his eyes and that was that. They dug him a grave and buried him in the dawn and that was that.

And now there were two, the Commander and his Second in Command.

_Overwatch, that's what they called it. A force against the Omnics in a war they were losing, congrats boys, you survived the longest so you get to head this pet project. Make America proud. Try not to die. "Well, Morrison, looks like we made it big." "Hm," he said as they sat in their room in Switzerland the night before they would meet their new team, getting drunk for the first time in a long while; it had taken many bottles to even slightly effect them, "You can call me Jack." "Jack, is it? Call me Gabe, then." "Not Commander? Not L.A. anymore?" "Shut up, Indiana." "Gabe." "Hm?" "Gabe. Gaaaaaabe." "...Are you drunk?" "...Maybe."_

* * *

 

"My squad once found some American magazine--Playboy, I think it's called. Most of it was ruined, but this page survived," she held out a wrinkled from many-times-folded glossy page with a smiling blonde woman proudly displaying her ample and almost entirely exposed chest; one of the fold creases had been worn so many times, right over her eyes that they looked scratched out, "Used to pass it around and joke that it was the American dream. That if we ever got the opportunity to go to America and escape the fighting, she would be there, waiting for us in that exact outfit, tits out, blond hair, blue eyes, and all, the perfect dream. She's probably dead though, now that I think about it. Like many of my squad."

"It's not...ah, embarrassing for you to keep something like that?" Wilhelm asked delicately, as he quickly passed it on for Lindholm to see.

"Goodness no!" Amari laughed loudly, full and throaty, "When I die, I demand to be buried with this picture, right next to the one of Fareeha. Take what was important to me in life to the grave: my family and beautiful women."

"No men get the honor?" Reyes poked fun at her.

"Absolutely not. I've been nothing but disappointed by men my entire life," she laughed again, "Just ask my dead squad."

They all had their charms. Little charms for protection and strength.

Amari, her picture of the American dream. They had once joked about replacing the ratty, worn picture with one of Morrison, same pose, same blond hair and blues eyes, just newer. She had declined and he had too.

Lindholm had a small red and white-painted wooden horse in his pocket. They had asked him if it was from Ikea and he had told them to get fucked and nothing else about it. Jack caught him running a finger over the glossy back every so often, many times when he thought no one was looking, other times as if he wasn't aware he was doing it himself. He never asked.

Wilhelm carried an old bible with him, palm-sized to anyone else and comically small in his large hands. It was beautifully bound in leather, smooth with age, but the treasure lay on the inside. He had once admitted to Jack that he didn't read it as religiously as he once did, instead preferring to glance over his favorite passages and trace his fingers over the delicate images his wife had painted in the margins, illustrations of fish and fire, apples and snakes, angels and saints. Jack shrugged and told him there wasn't much time for reading, don't feel bad. Reinhardt nodded and said nothing else.

Liao had a lacy red garter from a stripper they once swore they had fallen in love with. They wore it like a bracelet or over their pants when they went into battle and swore it was lucky, that it had powers that would never let them get hurt. "Put on your garters, guys," became a saying when they knew they were entering danger, an inside joke and a prayer that they passed around, half-serious and half-joking, "Put on your magic garters. For luck."

Reyes had his beanie.

Morrison had a small square of satin in his wallet. No one else knew what it was, except Gabe. A tattered, dirty square hardly as large as a dollar, Jack didn't tell him what it was until they had been in Overwatch for two years. 

"You can't laugh," he made him promise.

"I'm going to laugh," Gabe promised.

"Fuck you," he said, but he told him anyway, "It's my baby blanket."

" _What."_

"What's left of it, anyway," Jack took the square out and rubbed it between his fingers, working it over in his hands; Gabriel understood now how the material didn't look anything like satin anymore, rubbed rough over the many years.

"You still  _technically_ have a baby blanket," he sounded somewhere in between awe and laughter; Jack punched his shoulder.

"Yeah, but it's not really about security or whatever people say. Or maybe it is, hell if I know. I just like having something in my hands. I end up doing this," he held up the ragged material between his fingers as indication, "To any blanket corners I get my hands on. This one just happens to be convenient, so I keep it." 

"I don't know whether to laugh or be disappointed," Gabe told him with an amused shake of his head, "We all were coming up with elaborate stories about what that shitty scrap of fabric was and it turns out it's your dumb baby blanket."

"You don't get to pull the disappointment card, asshole, only Amari does that."

"Fair. Guess I'll have to laugh then."

"I'm going to punch you."

_Later, after the war ended, Ana would call the two of them her Biggest Disappointments, fondly when they made small mistakes, jokingly when Jack broke the Watchpoint's coffee machine, fiercely when they were yelling at each other in one of their offices and she would slam through the door, grab them up by the collars, throw them down into seats and make coffee until they were civil._

_Tiredly, when they were old and she dragged both of them to a safehouse after they had sustained heavy damage from each other and patched them up. It didn't change anything and both men had left as soon as they could walk, but it had been something when they walked in different directions without another word or shot at the other.  
_

* * *

 

They were in a temple.

Temple was a generous word, although it had probably been a church at some point, with arching windows that might have housed stained glass at one point, now shattered and hollow. Whatever resided there--if anything did at all--wasn't holy, yet it still made them step lightly, murmur quietly into the echoing room. As if in reverence in that dark, grimy, empty place somewhere in an abandoned town in France.

Reyes was the first to see it, being in the front as he was, and he jumped back with a quiet curse, nearly opening fire.

A husk, that's what it was. Clearly broken and no longer working, a skeleton of an Omnic sat before the altar. It's severed head was bowed and lightless, balanced precariously and barely held up by a wire frame that had most of its plating ripped off, revealing a chest that held no core to power it. Legs crossed, part of one missing below the knee joint.

And arms.

The two connected to its torso rested in its lap, fingers mangled and missing. Yet around it, someone or someones or somethings had taken the pain to arrange arms scavenged from other robots around it, reaching out like. A poisonous flower.  
A dark Sun.  
A dead god.

Mismatched, broken arms welded to it and fanned out. A dark stain (probably blood? probably blood.) before it, burning words into stone: _God is angry_.

A broken shrine in a twisted temple, they stared at it until Reyes scoffed.

"Sick joke," he said, shaking his head as if to dispel uneasiness, "Make sure this place is secure, and then set up for the night. We've got a lot of ground to cover tomorrow. Amari, first watch."

Wilhelm shook his head sadly at the display before them, signing a cross over his shoulders and chest and tromping off to check the area. Like Reyes, Lindholm scoffed and started setting his load down. Amari gave the dead Omnic a hard look before turning around and stalking away.

Jack couldn't sleep at all. He couldn't rest with the dread that the robot would come to life at any second, that it's lights would burn red and many arms would strike out and kill them like a wrathful god demanding blood. He rolled over one more time and looked at Reyes, sleeping like the dead (lucky bastard) with his back huddled up against the wall before he got up and went to relieve Amari.

She sat, looking ahead and clutching her rifle.

He sat next to her and didn't say anything.

"God is merciful," she whispered after a moment that seemed a long time, "He is merciful."

She clutched her rifle as tightly as if it were religion, as if afraid it would slip away. Jack didn't say anything but nod. She finally went inside to try and sleep.

They all left the temple with dark shadows under their eyes, even Reyes.

_Years later, so many years later, when he saw a glowing figure, a metal body with six golden arms arching out of it like the Sun, he nearly opened fire at it, the God finally come to life to kill him and his fellow soldiers as they slept, how could they have been so foolish to leave it, of course it was still alive--but. No. It wasn't a god, and it didn't bring Death, only healing as he fell to his knees and clutched his gun to his chest and remembered himself. He wasn't that soldier. He was **a** soldier, but not that one, not anymore, when his friends were human and his enemies weren't. And now it was just a confusing mess.  
_

* * *

 

"You should talk to him."

Gabriel blinked and focused back in on the good doctor that was attending to his arm, all gentle words and gentle hands. He scowled.

"If he wants to talk, he has to put his pride away and come to me. I've got nothing to say."

He actually had a lot of things to Jack. He had a lot of things to say to the man who had his subordinate, friend, lover, now commander. But there were a lot of years with things left unsaid and so much anger that had been left to fester that it was...difficult to even begin now. And Jack hadn't  _graced_ him with so much as a message in months, so he wasn't feeling eager to return the favor. How simple it would have been if he could just be done with him.

Angela gave him the first hard look he had ever seen from the young woman. It was unnerving on her soft face.

"It's not pride that's keeping him from reaching out to you," she said vaguely.

It was obvious there was something more she wasn't saying, but patient confidentiality was probably keeping her from speaking it. Reyes didn't particularly care. Not anymore. She ushered him into his office after she was done sterilizing the cut and mending it, shuffling through her cabinet for a bottle of pain killers while he looked around idly.

"These aren't medical reports," he noted as his eyes wandered to her desk that was overflooding with stacks of paper.

"Jack often comes down here to get work done. He says it helps keep him focused and on top of it."

"Doesn't look very 'on top of it' to me," he snorted.

"Those are just the papers that came in today," she replied, her tone just a bit short. She deflated almost instantly though and handed him his bottle, "Take only when you need it and not more than two every four hours."

He took it with a murmured 'thanks, doc', and was about to leave when her hand stopped him. When he turned around, she was giving him a calculating, guarded look. After a few moments, she seemed to reach a conviction.

"Would you drop this off at Jack's quarters?" she asked, picking up a small white paper bag that rattled slightly, "He forgot to take it earlier."

He was about to refuse, but she held the bag out more firmly, and more rattles could be heard; she wasn't taking no for an answer. Sounded like a bottle, not unlike the one in Gabriel's pocket. Sighing angrily in defeat, he took it and nodded shortly. She offered him a small smile and he left.

He stared at the bag as he walked down the halls, contemplating opening it to see what was inside. Ziegler had given it to him for a reason, her careful deliberation told him as much. Whether it was as simple as trying to get him and Jack to see each other or if she was trying to tell him something more was the question. Fuck it, he thought, and pulled the bottle out.

He almost wished he hadn't. He didn't want to sympathize with the son of a bitch and he was sure Jack wouldn't have wanted his sympathy either. It didn't make anything better, that was for damn sure, because there was no excuse.

But it certainly explained some things.

_It was so hard sometimes. Hard to get up in the morning, hard to get dressed, hard to attend to the mountain of paperwork, hard to answer messages, even from friends. Especially from friends. He knew it made him seem cold, he knew he was isolating himself, he **knew** but he couldn't help it. A simple 'How are you?' that never got sent because he was consumed by doubt, three simple words and he couldn't hit send because he was a coward. He made frequent trips to Angela and brought his work with him, easy to focus on it when another person was there, to remind him he had responsibilities even if it was only with their presence. If not, he feared--no, he **knew** \-- he would slip into lethargy and get so behind there would be no way to dig himself out of all the paper, paper, **paper**. _

_Some days were harder than others. Some days felt like he only moved because of a little bottle labelled 'anti-depressants'. He threw himself into action when he was given the chance. He smiled where he had to and talked to people when he could. But more and more it seemed like it was all paperwork and he was drowning._

* * *

 

Liao was gone. Who knows where.

Reinhardt was retired. Forced.

Gérard was dead. Murdered.

Lena was lost somewhere in time. Scattered.

Jesse was down an arm. Bad mission.

Ana was missing. Dead.

_They didn't fight that night. They clinked glasses after they buried an empty casket, nothing inside but an old military uniform neatly folded, and two pictures, one of a little girl, one of an American dream. They had to find a new picture of that blond model, since Ana had taken hers with her and they didn't have her body--just another slap in the face to the whole ordeal. It had been hard to get their hands on one because it was from such an old magazine, but Reyes had threatened murder to several people and eventually one had popped up. It wasn't right--too glossy and un-imperfect--but it was something, and Jack folded it many times and scratched out the eyes to make it closer to the real thing, and Gabe agreed it looked better like that. More authentic. He stepped on it a few times for good measure._

_They had both comforted that little girl, not so little any more, as she stood stoic beside them._

_"To the biggest disappointments the world has ever seen," Gabriel raised his glass that night and Jack did too._

_"I think we can agree I'm the bigger disappointment though."_

_"God damn, Morrison," Reyes poured them both another glass, nearly full; when had he become Morrison again? When had he become Reyes? "Always have to make it all about you. Always have to be first."_

_There was no bite to it, no anger. He was tired. They both were._

_"I know," he said, tiredly, staring at the amber drink that was very similar to Ana's eyes. Eye. He drank deeply, "God damned conceited sonnuvabitch, aren't I."_

_He let his head fall back against the seat, staring listlessly at the ceiling because it was better than staring at the drink. He heard his friend (friend? enemy? co-worker? lover?) forgo the glass and start drinking directly from the bottle._

_"Gabe?" he asked, uncertainly, uncertainly because it had been a long time since he had used that name._

_He hummed in response, in the middle of taking a long drink._

_"I'm tired."_

_Another hum. Agreement. He passed the bottle over. Jack accepted it. They got properly drunk for the first time in a long time._

_Jesse McCree was gone when they woke up the next morning._

_Overwatch was gone in flames the next year.  
_

_How simple it would be, to have just been done at that point. But things were never done, things were never finished, not when it came to John Morrison and Gabriel Reyes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me at jazzjnkr on tumblr and cry with me over fictional characters:3c


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